Will man return to the moon??

[Dimetime35c]

Do you believe that in your life time you will get to see man return to the moon? I'm 24 almost 25 and I very firmly believe in my life time I will see man return to the moon and highly suspect that I'll even see the first man mission to mars. What is everyone else's thoughts? If not what time frame do you think is set for us to return to the moon

[Monkeh]

This all depends on economies. If it happens it will be a private company and not a government. Governments can no longer justify the expense when hospitals and schools need building.

I so hope it does though.

[nettcod]

I hope so.

[cypher_00]

I gues we will see China do it in the near future.

[Monkeh]

Oh yeah, China. Ignore my post above. China got this.

[Seret]

Yeah, the Chinese may go for a bit of *ahem* flag waving. But apart from that there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to send a manned mission back. If somebody finds a commercial reason to go up there you'll probably see a lot of unmanned activity, who knows, that may generate some manned flight in support of it.

[Nibb31]

China has their plates full with their space station plans until 2025.

NASA has EM-1 and EM-2 planned up to 2021 and no plans for a lander.

Russia actually has plans to assemble interplanetary spacecraft at their OPSEC station after 2025.

ESA has no interest in a manned program.

So, maybe after 2025 there might be an opportunity, but aerospace projects typically take at least 10 years to design and build, so I can't imagine anyone returning to the Moon or landing on Mars before at least 2035 or 2040.

[Mr Shifty]

Do you believe that in your life time you will get to see man return to the moon?

Maybe a woman will be the next person to set foot on the moon.

[jwenting]

said it before, will say it again: we've given up on space. The Chinese do some flag waving still but the moment ISS deorbits and there's no more Americans and Russians up there, they send one or two more flights to be able to claim victory and stop as well.

And that will mean we've resigned ourselves to extinction, the eventual (and usually rapid) fate of every species that loses the urge to expand its boundaries, and in human terms every civilisation that loses interestin exploration.

[Diche Bach]

There are a number of themes in science fiction that suggest good economic reasons for moon bases (helium 3 mining, solar energy harnessing, other minerals to a limited extent, micro-gravity industry, low gravity solid ground on which to build interplanetary space craft, etc.).

There are obviously ample scientific reasons (myriad questions that can be studied in virtually _all_ disciplines of natural and physical sciences), but I suspect those will not afford a sufficiently rapid return on economic investment to be the initial motivation to 'go back.'

I'm not even sure China will ultimately find it to be worth their while to expend the vast sums to do a bit of flag waving. In the absence of something like an intense low-intensity "Cold War" rivalry, it is difficult to imagine what could possibly make it a worthwhile investment.

I believe it was Geschosskopf in a thread some days or weeks back that, who pointed out that the single most important next step for humanity to achieve its 'dreams' of space exploration and exploitation is to devise better means to defeat the tyranny of Earth's gravity well. The cost to get stuff into orbit in the first place, much less to escape velocity are the main boundary that make things like returning to the moon questionable if not unviable.

[Omicron314]

Fake a report of oil on the Moon. We'll be there by the end of next week.

[Mr Shifty]

And that will mean we've resigned ourselves to extinction, the eventual (and usually rapid) fate of every species that loses the urge to expand its boundaries, and in human terms every civilisation that loses interestin exploration.

Based on the large sample size of space-faring species that we have, right? Sharks have been phylogenetically similar for 100 million years, but so far they haven't expanded their boundaries to the land or air or deep oceans.

[The Jedi Master]

China will visit the moon, the ESA will put someone on Mars. America and NASA will have no part.

[Jackissimus]

the ESA will put someone on Mars

... you made me laugh ...

I am from Europe, but my hope lies in Mr. Musk. His attempt at low cost space travel is the best so far.

[Diche Bach]

Based on the large sample size of space-faring species that we have, right? Sharks have been phylogenetically similar for 100 million years, but so far they haven't expanded their boundaries to the land or air or deep oceans.

Along with:

ferns (145 my)

alligators (55 my)

turtles (220 my)

In truth, all of these 'ancient' and 'relatively unchanging' taxa have undergone substantial adaptive radiation and diversification. But the point Shifty is making is quite valid

[Seret]

the ESA will put someone on Mars

Dunno abut that. I don't think the ESA will really do much significant without a bigger agency like NASA showing some leadership. Their projects so far have been fairly modest, and there's not a particularly great appetite for space projects in Europe in general. Most Europeans probably don't even realise ESA exists.

[lajoswinkler]

Yeah, probably China. China is relatively poorly developed country compared to US, Canada and countries in Europe, if we observe the development of the society itself. Chinese nationalism is more powerful and that's their fuel. Western countries have mostly depleted it (good for them).

One of the reasons of their web censorship is to keep the people less informed about what's happening in the world. Remember that they're basically still in the era of Tianmen massacre. I don't think the general public knows much about the Arab spring, for instance.

Most Europeans probably don't even realise ESA exists.

Sadly, that's true. Most people on the continent of Europe think space is something America and Russia does. Not only they aren't aware of ESA, but also JAXA and others.

Edited August 29, 2013 by lajoswinkler

[NGTOne]

I believe it was Geschosskopf in a thread some days or weeks back that, who pointed out that the single most important next step for humanity to achieve its 'dreams' of space exploration and exploitation is to devise better means to defeat the tyranny of Earth's gravity well. The cost to get stuff into orbit in the first place, much less to escape velocity are the main boundary that make things like returning to the moon questionable if not unviable.

This right here. Current launch costs (on the order of tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram) are too damn high for national governments to justify spending money on space programs (though if the US government would spend more than 0.5% of its annual budget on NASA [i'm thinking the Department of Defense could use some cuts], we'd probably be a lot further than we are now). That's actually kind of why I'm anxious to see the Skylon project come to fruition, because having a reusable, low-turnaround-time SSTO would revolutionize space travel across the board. And Skylon is being designed, from the ground up, to be low-turnaround - for instance, it follows a much shallower re-entry path than the Shuttle, so it experiences less compressive heating, which means it can use simpler (and more robust, and lighter) thermal protection on the underside, for significant savings in pre-launch turnaround time and maintenance costs. But I digress.

The current problem is that any solution for decreasing launch costs, given our current technology level, would require a large number of launches to bring to fruition. Consider, for instance, the space elevator: assuming we had sufficient manufacturing capacity for carbon nanotubes, we would still have to send up enough cable to reach geosynchronous orbit, AND either send up or bring from somewhere else a sufficiently massive object to act as a tether (for instance, an asteroid). Either way, we're talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of groundside launches before the elevator is operational.

There are a few proposed options that wouldn't require any space launches to build, but would be just (exorbitantly) expensive - for instance, consider the proposal for a mass driver. It accelerates you almost all the way to orbital velocity, and then you give yourself a little bump with rockets at your apoapsis to circularize. Problem is, to build a sufficiently large and powerful mass driver to send a spacecraft of any appreciable mass to LEO would cost on the order of tens or even hundreds of billions - double that if you want it to be safe for passengers (limited acceleration).

I'm not saying this stuff is impossible, but unless the governments (or corporations) of Earth get their priorities straight (why the hell would any country need enough nuclear weapons to annihalate the world 100 times over?), it's not happening anytime soon.

[SargeRho]

Actually, such a mass drive would likely be on the order of billions. Next to no new technology needs to be invented for it. We know how to build maglev trains, and a mass driver is pretty much the same. This kind of stuff has been in use for at least a decade in rollercoasters, and the navy is equipping their carriers with mass drivers to replace the steam catapults.

A space elevator would likely have to be built completely in space. You'd send up a vessel to grab a large enough carbonaceous asteroid, and start making a long-ass carbon nanofiber cable.

[Jackissimus]

Actually, such a mass drive would likely be on the order of billions. Next to no new technology needs to be invented for it. We know how to build maglev trains, and a mass driver is pretty much the same. This kind of stuff has been in use for at least a decade in rollercoasters, and the navy is equipping their carriers with mass drivers to replace the steam catapults.

A space elevator would likely have to be built completely in space. You'd send up a vessel to grab a large enough carbonaceous asteroid, and start making a long-ass carbon nanofiber cable.

We won't be able to build space elevators for decades, if ever. We simply don't have a strong enough cable to build it. You need long enough CNTs without defects, and spinning them together probably won't produce a cable strong enough. All arguments about space elevators end up with this problem. So it's basically the same as arguing for building the Starship Enterprise. We cannot build it unless we have warp drives, so why even discuss it. Rocket scientists and engineers cannot push this issue forward, we need to wait for the chemists. Go into chemistry, it's a great field!

[Motokid600]

I like to think low-g mining would be reason enough to go back. All it needs is a way to ferry the materials back to Earth. Humans would need to go up there to survey and setup automated miners. Maybe bomb the site beforehand and have robots pick up the pieces. Then setup a separater/smelter to refine the materials and send them back. The only loophole is the sending everything back part. The financial gain from the materials has to out weigh the cost of the ferry system.

Then there's the fact of discovery. Who knows what new combinations of metals could come from lunar materials. ( especially if we can forge materials in low-g ) Stronger, lighter metals. And then there's h3 mining. Which could make fusion energy a reality which is THE holy grail. And from there on tech advancement would explode. You say we need to make launching things into space cheaper? Well for starters lighter materials would help, but we have to go get those materials first. This is all wishful thinking of course, but it tears me apart when I look up at night and see our societies salvation hanging in the sky ripe for the plucking. All we need to do is go and get it...

Why we sent astronauts to the moon before sending up stuff for them to assemble and build is beyond me. ( Tools, parts, habbitat foundations, etc ) We just collected rocks and waved a flag.. and played golf.

Edited August 29, 2013 by Motokid600

[NGTOne]

Apollo proved that it COULD be done. Now the next step is to extrapolate on what they did, but bigger and more advanced, and iterate until we have an industrial system in space.

[magnemoe]

Yeah, probably China. China is relatively poorly developed country compared to US, Canada and countries in Europe, if we observe the development of the society itself. Chinese nationalism is more powerful and that's their fuel. Western countries have mostly depleted it (good for them).

One of the reasons of their web censorship is to keep the people less informed about what's happening in the world. Remember that they're basically still in the era of Tianmen massacre. I don't think the general public knows much about the Arab spring, for instance.

Sadly, that's true. Most people on the continent of Europe think space is something America and Russia does. Not only they aren't aware of ESA, but also JAXA and others.

China want to show they are an superpower. This is more important to them than decreased taxes or more welfare.

And yes its send an scary message, an interstellar mission would be expensive and not give fast payback.

Who would do it? Somebody who do it for the emperor, the race or to spread the world of Om. Not the kinds of guys you want to run into in an dark part of the milky way (trows ball of yarn toward the Kzin)

[Seret]

We won't be able to build space elevators for decades, if ever. We simply don't have a strong enough cable to build it. You need long enough CNTs without defects, and spinning them together probably won't produce a cable strong enough. All arguments about space elevators end up with this problem. So it's basically the same as arguing for building the Starship Enterprise. We cannot build it unless we have warp drives, so why even discuss it. Rocket scientists and engineers cannot push this issue forward, we need to wait for the chemists. Go into chemistry, it's a great field!

This.

I'm an engineer by trade, but I'm quite happy to admit that most of the headline innovations engineers come up with are due to advances in materials science. Without metallurgists, chemists, etc, we'd still be trying to build stuff out of sticks and dung.

Folks are working on some of the technology required for a space elevator, there's still quite a few unanswered questions (eg: what's the best way to power the climber?), but until someone solves the materials problem of making a strong enough cable it's all a bit moot.

[Michael Kim]

I'm a Chinese and I can tell you for sure we've got plans for it.

And to those above who think we send astronauts up to wave flags: We carry out space missions for science. Stop your cold war and space race mentalities.